Research Funded by Third Parties

The Federal Office of Radiation Protection (BfS) participates in research projects which are initiated and funded by third parties. These are mostly projects of the European Union. BfS is the National Contact Point for the EU framework programme. Here, BfS provides advice to other working groups in Germany who want to participate in research projects of the EU in the area of radiation protection.

BfS was a partner in the EU founded project SEMI-NUC running from 2013 to 2016, co-ordinated by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), France. The objective was to evaluate possibilities for advanced studies on the health effects of nuclear bomb testing in Kazakhstan.

The goal of the RENEB project was to establish a sustainable European network in biological dosimetry involving 23 organisations from 16 countries, identified by the TENEB survey, to guarantee highest efficiency in processing and scoring of biological samples for fast and reliable results implemented in the EU emergency management.

Beginning of 2016, the RENEB network was based on a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between 26 organisations from 16 European countries.

The EU-funded project PEDDOSE.NET ("Dosimetry and Health Effects of Diagnostic Applications of Radiopharmaceuticals with particular emphasis on the use in children and adolescents") summarized and evaluated the current knowledge on the age-dependent dosimetry for radioactive substances currently used for diagnostic imaging procedures in nuclear medicine.

Cellular radiation hypersensitivity and radiation resistance are main issues of applied radiation science for several reasons. in. On the one hand, radiation hypersensitivity may increase tumour risk for individuals occupationally or medically exposed to radiation, on the other hand radiation hypersensitivity and resistance of tumour and normal tissues are important factors in radiation therapy of tumours.

The long-term risk of radiation induced cancer or other health effects following computed tomography (CT) scanning has never been directly assessed. There is scientific evidence that radiation exposures down to about 100 mSv in adults and down to about 10 mSv in children can cause cancer. The European collaborative EPI-CT project is the first large-scale cohort study to investigate cancer risks and the underlying biological effects induced by medical CT exposure.

The STORE project was a Support Action funded by the European Commission under the 7th EURATOM Framework Programme. The project is addressed in the work programme topic: Fission-2008-3.1.1: Databases and Tissue Banks. The consortium consisted of eight partners from five countries and was coordinated by the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS), Germany.